roaming teams used to use swords for steering around stuff, and spec for fast kills (you kill stuff, sword appears, you move out).
As a side effect I think we will see more turtle groups, and lingering around game play.

Meh at best. zergs will still be abusing stacking, and combo fields, we need fixes that improve pvp gameplay. This is grasping at the first obvious thing without thinking it out.

I'd like to see zergs of 30 plus get tagged automatically no matter what they're doing. Like, with a big skull and crossbones with a dumb look on its face... and a sound affect that gets louder as it gets close to you, like "DERP DERP! DERP! HERP DERP! LOOKOUT!!!"

I'd like to see zergs of 30 plus get tagged automatically no matter what they're doing. Like, with a big skull and crossbones with a dumb look on its face... and a sound affect that gets louder as it gets close to you, like "DERP DERP! DERP! HERP DERP! LOOKOUT!!!"

Or they could use the JAWS themesong, and it gets louder and louder the closer the zerg is.

A different icon for a 25+ zerg would do more to break large groups apart than adjusting the threshold at which swords appear. The adjustment does nothing but confirm what you already knew in the first place.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out. Often these sorts of changes can have unintended consequences, for example I could quite easily see a big fall in the number of ah hoc defensive responses being made when folks see orange swords come up because they think to themselves, well I only have 10 here, they have 25+ - that asset is as good as lost given how I have seen some folks operate in WvW on all sides.

25 seems a high threshold, 11 to 15 would be better I think. With 10 you can lay down a golem or 2 rams so that seems reasonable.

Well that does seem more realistic. You need scouts to spot army movements that aren't attacking, or to check damage to walls when trebbing. Leaving a base empty, but having "orange alarm bells" takes some of the tactics out of it.

Let's not forget that this is a game. As importact as tactics should be, designing the game towards having player litterally doing nothing but waiting for something to happen, that's a problem. People are going to be put on scouting duty and they are going to be bored. Sometimes it pays off (one of my favourite moments in WvW was catching a 12 golem rush trying to sneak along the wall near Golanta when I was scouting at the camp, we got our main forces back to lowlands in time to crush them all as the broke the inner gate) but a lot of the time you sitting around doing nothing for an hour or more. This is why people usually scout more active locations, they are more likely to be hit and give value to their time spent in WvW (if you never have anything to report, it feels like you may as well have not logged in).

Realistically there are allied NPCs at every tower you own, so it's not unreasonable to expect them to send up some kind of sign of being attacked. I think this change could result in some very interesting and enjoyable changes to WvW. I also think there will be a lot of really bored scouts in the coming weeks.

This also adds to the PvDoor element of WvW. The whole point of orange swords is to lead people to the battle. It's not just a warning sign that a tower or keep is being attacked, it's a focus point for players to clash with enemy players. With less orange swords following the zergs around, there will be less players running to defend towers (assuming they weren't notified by a scout) and more tasks accomplished without actually fighting other players.

Let's not forget that this is a game. As importact as tactics should be, designing the game towards having player litterally doing nothing but waiting for something to happen, that's a problem. People are going to be put on scouting duty and they are going to be bored. Sometimes it pays off (one of my favourite moments in WvW was catching a 12 golem rush trying to sneak along the wall near Golanta when I was scouting at the camp, we got our main forces back to lowlands in time to crush them all as the broke the inner gate) but a lot of the time you sitting around doing nothing for an hour or more. This is why people usually scout more active locations, they are more likely to be hit and give value to their time spent in WvW (if you never have anything to report, it feels like you may as well have not logged in).

Realistically there are allied NPCs at every tower you own, so it's not unreasonable to expect them to send up some kind of sign of being attacked. I think this change could result in some very interesting and enjoyable changes to WvW. I also think there will be a lot of really bored scouts in the coming weeks.

This also adds to the PvDoor element of WvW. The whole point of orange swords is to lead people to the battle. It's not just a warning sign that a tower or keep is being attacked, it's a focus point for players to clash with enemy players. With less orange swords following the zergs around, there will be less players running to defend towers (assuming they weren't notified by a scout) and more tasks accomplished without actually fighting other players.

Only time will tell how this plays out.

Scouts who get bored are doing it wrong and shouldn't be scouts. It's a game, yes, and the object is to have fun. How much fun is is when your 5 man group is running arounf and a few bone heads start to follow dropping x's everywhere? How much fun is it when your tactical group of 20 gets a leech spy attached who drops the x's? Orange x's have no basis in reality. It's magic info from the void.

I'd say get rid of it altogether and slap a tag on groups of over 30 no matter what they do. Groups of 30 would cause very obvious environmental cues like wildlife running away, loud discussions, clanging of armor... show those guys. Give any group under 20 the advantage of absolute secrecy and actually ENCOURAGE smaller groups.

Realistically there are allied NPCs at every tower you own, so it's not unreasonable to expect them to send up some kind of sign of being attacked. I think this change could result in some very interesting and enjoyable changes to WvW. I also think there will be a lot of really bored scouts in the coming weeks.

They may as well have them do something. I mean, 2 people take out the guard at an unupgraded tower.

May be have each keep send a messenger to warn of an attack. If you kill the messenger you can attack undetected. Make it so the messenger is hard to spot so you need to be paying attention (a bird may be - ) .

Let's not forget that this is a game. As importact as tactics should be, designing the game towards having player litterally doing nothing but waiting for something to happen, that's a problem. People are going to be put on scouting duty and they are going to be bored. Sometimes it pays off (one of my favourite moments in WvW was catching a 12 golem rush trying to sneak along the wall near Golanta when I was scouting at the camp, we got our main forces back to lowlands in time to crush them all as the broke the inner gate) but a lot of the time you sitting around doing nothing for an hour or more. This is why people usually scout more active locations, they are more likely to be hit and give value to their time spent in WvW (if you never have anything to report, it feels like you may as well have not logged in).

Realistically there are allied NPCs at every tower you own, so it's not unreasonable to expect them to send up some kind of sign of being attacked. I think this change could result in some very interesting and enjoyable changes to WvW. I also think there will be a lot of really bored scouts in the coming weeks.

This also adds to the PvDoor element of WvW. The whole point of orange swords is to lead people to the battle. It's not just a warning sign that a tower or keep is being attacked, it's a focus point for players to clash with enemy players. With less orange swords following the zergs around, there will be less players running to defend towers (assuming they weren't notified by a scout) and more tasks accomplished without actually fighting other players.

Only time will tell how this plays out.

I don't disagree that doing nothing for extended periods would get boring. But no one can FORCE you to sit back and scout. If people feel that scouting is vital to success, then someone will volunteer.

And I think the NPCs DO sound the alarm. That's what the white swords are.

This is going to lead to a lot of boring boring hours spent tediously sitting on scout duty in towers looking out for the 20 man zerg ninja (25 is a lot of people these days). As much as I love that they are trying to increase the viability of smaller groups of players, I don't love that the counter to this is to make players bored by having them sit in a tower to perform the role the old orange swords did.

It's too early to tell whether this is going to benefit more than it hurts. I'm guessing it's going to largely depend on how you (ab)use it.

People can set up choke points & wait. DAOC vanilla had milegates. You had to pass them to enter the enemy frontier. On my server we had an alliance that routinely set up shop at the milegate and waited for enemies. Theres numerous points on the BL's you could set up choke points. The ramps leading up to sunny & crag, the entrances to titan (northernmost supply) build a buncha A/C's & ballista and assign people to guard those positions.

Never understood why people didn't man these bottlenecks over allowing enemies to run right up and set up seige.

Also you can chat with people from other servers. I'm in guilds on various servers and all you have to do is whisper them. I don't use it to wreck WVW either not like you can anyways WVW is a colossal sh-t show.

When casuals log into WvW they head to the nearest cross swords cause that's where the action is assumed to be. Since the small fights will be filtered out, the the casuals will continue to reinforce the larger zergs rather than spread out to help the multitude of skirmishes around the map. The already big zergs will only get bigger with this change.
Small group play will be more about ninja capping (PvE) and less about skirmishing other groups (PvP) because fewer groups will be moving to intercept them.
Maybe this won't affect the top tier where 30-man is considered "tiny" and there are always crowds of people spread across the map, but I think less populated servers will be hurt by this change.

When casuals log into WvW they head to the nearest cross swords cause that's where the action is assumed to be. Since the small fights will be filtered out, the the casuals will continue to reinforce the larger zergs rather than spread out to help the multitude of skirmishes around the map. The already big zergs will only get bigger with this change.
Small group play will be more about ninja capping (PvE) and less about skirmishing other groups (PvP) because fewer groups will be moving to intercept them.
Maybe this won't affect the top tier where 30-man is considered "tiny" and there are always crowds of people spread across the map, but I think less populated servers will be hurt by this change.

You are however assuming that people are currently ONLY moving to intercept/scout/defend things when there are swords. Any server that want any chance of wining NEED to have people running around scouting/escorting and so on, this change will simply make it even more needed.

People can set up choke points & wait. DAOC vanilla had milegates. You had to pass them to enter the enemy frontier. On my server we had an alliance that routinely set up shop at the milegate and waited for enemies. Theres numerous points on the BL's you could set up choke points. The ramps leading up to sunny & crag, the entrances to titan (northernmost supply) build a buncha A/C's & ballista and assign people to guard those positions.

Never understood why people didn't man these bottlenecks over allowing enemies to run right up and set up seige.

Also you can chat with people from other servers. I'm in guilds on various servers and all you have to do is whisper them. I don't use it to wreck WVW either not like you can anyways WVW is a colossal sh-t show.

There are very few locations on the map where anyone has to travel to get somewhere else (the only one for certain I can think of is the northern supply camp on borderlands). Every other location has multiple pathways to get to them, and most of them are not like the cliffside road on the borderlands. If new maps were designed in a similair way to the norther supply camps, I can see something like this being more viable. For as long as you can get pretty much anywhere on the map through multiple paths, some of which are completely open and out of the way, or the simple existence of stealthed mesmers (or mesmers that walked the long way around) with portals, I don't think choke points outside of towers and keeps (which usually have at least one choke that is the sole path of entry) will be a viable means of defense. Unless you can guarantee regular passage through them, they would still be boring.

As far as not needing to scout if you don't want to, for as long as scouting is essential to defending points, it will be done. If ArenaNet designs a meta game that strongly supports scouting but can't provide regular threats to be scouted on, that's a game design flaw imo. Doing what it takes to succeed or win should be fun, not boring. They can't force me personally to scout, but by rincreasing the numbers for orange swords they are forcing the need to scout into the meta. People won't always be replaced or even volunteer in the first place. Running up and down hills keep looking for catapults or rams (or even waiting for white swords to pop up, some times you won't see white swords for over an hour) isn't exactly fun, no matter how you do it. If you're reading a book or watching a movie, the game isn't what's entertaining you.

White swords are unreliable. They last for three minutes (I think, possibly 2 and a half, I can't remember precicely) and can be triggered by a single player hitting the gate or a wall. If your fighting a server that isn't lazy, white swords will be up 99% of the time. White swords are useful against servers who don't scout and can be easily abused, but what they actually do is mask a real attack. People assume the swords are put up by the quaggans, or that dude that killed a cannon or attacked the south gate, or the single treb hitting the tier 3 wall from garrison. They don't check the north gate (which is a long way out of the way) for the ninja crew who is ramming it down.

Orange swords do more than provide information, they encourage combat between servers. People know where to reinforce to get into a fight. It's possible that with less orange swords we will see les fights.

All of this is speculation and we truly don't know how the meta will look after this, I can see good and bad coming from it.

No one needs to literally stand guard. When I scout, I run a specific route, hitting yaks n Vet Guards as I go, reporting the groups I see, sometimes taking a camp here or there. I mean, 4 scouts with coordinated routes could do the whole map. Plus, random folks report in all the time.

I think folks will just have to get used to doing what they should have been doing all along: reporting what they see. All this does is make an awkward and silly game mechanic a little less awkward and silly.

If they haven't already they'll just make a map hack that shows them where enemies are like in DAOC. I can usually tell when there's a big inc because my comp will momentarily stutter because its loading something.